The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C. Since 1971, CSPI has been working to improve the public’s health through its work on nutrition, food safety, and alcohol issues. CSPI is supported primarily by the 850,000 subscribers to its Nutrition Action Healthletter (I subscribe and find the articles so educational and informative) and philanthropic foundations.
Recently, CSPI conducted a survey on marketing food to children. The grades given out in the study were not based on the quality of the food, but rather on the marketing standards and policies used by the manufacturers when promoting their products to youngsters.
In 2006, The National Academies’ Institute of Medicine (IOM) concluded that television food advertising (the largest medium employed to advertise to children) affects children’s food choices, food purchase requests, diets, and health. We can see this in the alarming rate of obesity and childhood diabetes (Type-2; adult onset). Astonishingly, companies spend approximately $2 billion a year on marketing foods and beverages to children, mostly for foods high in calories, fats, sugars, and sodium, and low in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and key nutrients.
In 2008, the Federal Trade Commission recommended that companies which market their food products to children should adopt “meaningful nutrition-based standards.” In 2009, when CSPI conducted their assessment, of the 128 companies analyzed, two-thirds (68%) did not have a policy for food marketing to children.
Mars Inc. received the highest grade of B+ because it does monitor its advertising and does not market its products directly to children under 12. The majority of companies received a failing grade.
The report is 34 pages (with lots of pictures and graphs) and a very interesting read for those with children or, like me, with lots of nieces and nephews whom I love and adore and pray for their health.
The full analysis, Report Card on Food-Marketing Policies: An Analysis of Food and Entertainment Company Policies Regarding Food and Beverage Marketing to Children is available on-line, free of charge at www.cspinet.org/marketingreportcard.
